HARD NEWS 07/09/01 - The Refuge

HARD NEWS is first broadcast in Auckland on 95bFM around 9.30am on Fridays and replayed around 5.15pm Friday and 10am
Sunday on The Culture Bunker. You can listen to 95bFM live on the Internet. Point your web browser to http://www.95bfm.co.nz. You will need an MP3 player. Currently New Zealand is 12 hours ahead of GMT.

GOOD DAY MEDIAPHILES ... it is Spring. The days are longer, the light is stronger and there is, in the words of the
great sage Murray Mexted, "a tingle up the spine - a tingle in the loins!" Not that we want to talk about the rugby ...

Well, actually, I do. Spare me the national angst, please. The All Blacks just lacked the composure to hang on to the
win they needed and deserved. The lineouts were a travesty and the ref was an idiot. But that 20 point comeback was
stirring stuff.

The National Party, by some reckonings, also needs a 20-point comeback. But until they change the captain I fear they
won't deserve much. Bluntly: Jenny Shipley was an embarrassment this week.

In trying to punch holes in the government plan to accept 150 of the Afghan refugees stranded on the Tampa, she used
parliamentary privilege to claim that Dr Najibullah Lafraie, who was accepted here as a refugee last year and is now
working in Christchurch, was an Afghan terrorist. It took me about 10 minutes on the Internet to satisfy myself that
this was an outrageous slur.

Yes, Lafraie was associated with the Mujahadeen - who, if I recall my late 20th century political orthodoxy, were the
good guys. Battling the Evil Empire and all that. He doesn't appear to even have been a soldier, let alone a terrorist.
As Afghani Foreign Minister from 1992 to 1996, he was generally first stop for UN and friendly government
representatives.

When the Taliban overthrew his government, his brother - an aid worker - was imprisoned and he went into hiding before
escaping to Pakistan. He wasn't safe in Pakistan because he had criticised that government's support for the Taliban.

During his time as minister, he was also officially received at a dinner at Australia's Parliament House. Which made it
all the more embarrassing when the Australian Immigration Department refused to consider his refugee application last
year.

The Melbourne Age ran a story headed 'Inquiry call over Afghan exile bungle'. His brother died of cancer waiting for a
new home; his brother's wife died of an asthma attack. Lafraie and his family were eventually accepted by New Zealand. I
hope they are happy here.

When an Australian professor declared this week that Shipley's slur made her unfit for office, she just dug herself
deeper. Her information came from "independent sources", she insisted. Try "flat-out wrong and scurrilous", Jenny. Even
than she didn't have the grace to withdraw: instead she told Parliament that in 1995 his *government* was "allegedly"
the instigator of a mob attack on the Pakistani Embassy in Kabul. Oh, really ...

Shipley wasn't the only one trying to make cheap political mileage out of refugees, of course. Winston Peters, tickled
up the dimwits at his party conference with a re-run of his old sly slurs against Asian immigrants. The people on the
Tampa were "essentially queue jumpers" he said.

This is not only an astoundingly arrogant and smug statement - I'd like to see Winston Peters biding his time in Kabul
- it is also wrong. Many of the people on the Tampa have already been declared refugees by UNHCR. They just need a home.

Peters also implied that New Zealanders would miss out on medical care because of the money spend on the Afghans. This
is a flat-out lie. They come under our existing quota of 750 refugees annually. There is a budget and there is a place
for them to go. Winston Peters knows that.

This makes it all the more weird and worrying that the erstwhile bard of the left, Chris Trotter, spoke at the New
Zealand First conference. Or maybe not: after lamenting the Wellington policy elite's "snobbery" towards New Zealand
First's back-of-a-fag-packet policies, he launched into a warning about the anti-democratic instincts of Maori, noting
that in three decades Polynesians would be the ethnic majority. In running the line of New Zealand as the new Fiji, he
didn't explain why one form of nationalism was so good and the other very bad.

The perils of economic nationalism have, of course, been amply illustrated by the Air New Zealand debacle. Perhaps we
can't just let the national carrier go to blazes - or to a firesale - but it is tempting.

It emerged this week that the Air New Zealand board's whole recap strategy was based on the spectacularly unlikely idea
that Richard Branson would sell it his cut-price airline Virgin Blue. Branson's public rejection of the deal was as
hilarious as Air New Zealand's strategy was dismal. For once, I'm agreeing with Stephen Franks here: the Air New Zealand
directors should hang their heads in shame.

Anyway, there wasn't a whole lot of news to read about in the Herald this week, on account of most of its journalists
being out on indefinite strike. The management got a fright and offered a belated compromise, but it apparently wasn't
enough. If they hadn't spent the past couple of months being obstructive and evasive, it might have been. Even before
the strike, morale at the Herald was apparently as bad as it's ever been. And for what?

At least Alliance mayoral candidate Matt McCarten injected a bit of levity, by trying to place a full-page ad
complaining that the strike had meant "zilch" coverage of the local body election campaign. This was rejected; as was a
follow-up featuring John Banks' head on the body of Stalin. I think they're up to six alternative versions now, none of
them acceptable to the Herald.

To be honest, I've been relatively happy with Christine Fletcher, and I'm a bit wary of party presidents as mayors
since the Bob Harvey business, but I do like McCarten's campaign style. Have a look at www.matt4mayor.org.nz. There'll
be a bit more this weekend at www.mediawatch.co.nz too - you can even vote us into an Internet Award if you like.

And, finally, as we approach one weekend, a word for the last. The GE-Free Rally was as big as I thought it would be:
10,000 people up Queen Street, through steady rain, happy dancing. The question for the organisers is what they do with
it all now.

Well, here goes: slogans won't do for ever and neither will some of the Very Simple Arguments that got people into the
streets. Not everybody is going to read the Royal Commission's report, but I think it's really important that everybody
tests their beliefs by reading, well, something. I was depressed to hear that a group of scientist counter-protestors
was to be escorted away by police for their own protection. The last thing we need is scientists being assaulted in the
streets.

Seek debate with your opponents - if your case is good it can only strengthen you. Actually, this strikes me as a
sitter for a Citizens' Initiated Referendum. Go to it, then.

And, lordy, it's time for the B-net New Zealand Music Awards, all the way over in Takapuna City. Should be nice? Gotta
be nice ...

Next in Comment

Metiria Turei (here with James Shaw) was the co-leader of the Green party until
2017, but resigned within weeks of her welfare reform speech in which she shared
her personal experience with New Zealand’s welfare system. Scowlie/flickr , CC ...

I t isn’t necessary to like Julian Assange to think that his extradition to the
US (on the charge of aiding and abetting Chelsea Manning) would be a major injustice.
And lest that be construed as a claim that the right to justice of his Swedish accusers ...

The death march of local journalism looks set to continue in 2019… and you best
believe it is a very real problem for our democracy. Diverse and robust local media
coverage is highly important to a democratic society, yet the corporate media sector ...

Julian Assange continues to ripple and roam as a cipher through the political and
media scape of the world. Detained in Belmarsh maximum security prison, the sort
of stately abode only reserved for the most dangerous of criminals, many with indeterminate ...

“Your honour, I represent the United States government”. The Westminster Magistrates
Court had been left with little doubt by the opening words of the legal team marshalled
against the face of WikiLeaks. Julian Assange was being targeted by the imperium ...

The man seemed like a bearded emissary, a holy figure nabbed in his sleep. He looked
similarly pale as to how he did in 2013, but he cut a more shocking figure. Most
prisoners would have had room to move in a compound. The Ecuadorean embassy in London ...

Political asylum is an accepted if often ignored right. It is also at the mercy of
those interests that grant it. Ecuador’s repeated insistence on conditioning Julian
Assange’s stay in its London abode is tantamount to corroding the idea of asylum ...

“I will not comply with this, or any other grand jury.” So explained Chelsea
Manning in justifying her refusal to answer questions and comply with a grand jury
subpoena compelling her to testify on her knowledge of WikiLeaks. “Imprisoning ...

Julian Assange sits in a jail cell today after being betrayed by the Ecuadorian government
and his home country of Australia. A British judge named Michael Snow has found the
WikiLeaks founder guilty of violating bail conditions, inserting himself into the ...

Governments’ (monstrous and criminal) behavior should not be secret. People should
know what their government is doing, and what a powerful foreign government is doing
to their own countries. The actual results of the work of WikiLeaks have been hugely ...

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – Julian P. Assange, 47, the founder of WikiLeaks, was arrested
today in the United Kingdom pursuant to the U.S./UK Extradition Treaty, in connection
with a federal charge of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion for agreeing to ...

New York, April 11, 2019--The Committee to Protect Journalists today said it was
deeply concerned by the U.S. prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Authorities
in the United Kingdom arrested Assange this morning at the Ecuadoran Embassy as part ...

Julian Assange’s mother reported yesterday that the WikiLeaks founder has not been
permitted any visitors during his detention in Belmarsh Prison, including from doctors
and his lawyers. Doctors who visited Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy have attested ...